Simon Hart is a Telegraph Sport writer, who has covered six Olympic Games as well as the 2012 host city election in Singapore.

London 2012 Olympics: injury heartbreaks are fresh reminder of tightrope athletes walk in Games year

Heartache: Nick Leavey has faced up to the fact he will be missing the Games (Photo: AFP)

As the number of confirmed selections for Team GB passes the 100 mark, spare a thought for those athletes whose Olympic dreams have been ended by cruel, 11th-hour injuries.

Sprinter Craig Pickering, who anchored Britain’s 4×100 metres relay team in Beijing four years ago, revealed this week that he would be missing the entire athletics season after undergoing back surgery.

Nick Leavey, who had high hopes of a place in the men’s 4x400m squad after helping Britain to Commonwealth bronze in 2010 and European indoor silver last year, is also out of the Games due to hamstring problems, while long-distance runner Andy Vernon faces a battle against the clock to recover from a stress fracture in his foot.

“Olympic dream crushed!” Vernon tweeted last week on receiving the diagnosis, which was all the more shattering because the Aldershot and Farnham athlete had been in the best form of his life after recently setting personal bests over 5,000 and 10,000m.

The list goes on. Kelly Sotherton, the 2004 Olympic heptathlon bronze medallist, was forced to pull up with a back problem during the 200m while attempting her first heptathlon in four years last month. Her chances of making it to London now hang by a thread.

And Jenny Meadows, an 800m world bronze medallist three years ago, is battling to recover from a torn Achilles – not the kind of injury you want when there are Olympic qualifying times to chase.

The final countdown to the Olympic Games was ever thus, as Paula Radcliffe, Jessica Ennis and Dame Kelly Holmes can testify.

But the fact that injury is an occupational hazard of being an elite athlete does not make it any easier for someone who has worked for four years for the once-in-a-lifetime chance to compete at a home Games.

With just over two months remaining until the start of the Games, avoiding injury will be at the forefront of every athlete’s mind. We are now well into the period when a tear or a pull would leave no time to recover full fitness.

But with trials to negotiate and selectors to impress, there is no question of wrapping oneself up in cotton wool until the opening ceremony.

Instead, every athlete has a difficult tightrope to walk in the coming weeks, especially those on the fringes of selection who will be chasing personal bests to make it into the team. Their task will be to push their body to its limit without going beyond it.